


the nightmare of your choice

by unrain



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Still Exy Players, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:09:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unrain/pseuds/unrain
Summary: Gods. Monsters. Pick your poison.





	the nightmare of your choice

Matt Wilds arrives in Columbia with gentle eyes and a cheerful demeanor, a wife and a baby kid in tow. His smile would’ve been nice too, Neil thinks, if he hadn’t been stuck in San Francisco for so long that he grew three whole sets of jagged shark teeth. Neil can tell he’s trying not to smile too wide whenever Bubba tells a joke to avoid cutting his lips on them. He’s soft-spoken, maybe even a little bit shy. Not at all bitter for being traded off his tier A team of five years to a team that hasn’t even been close to _touching_ the championships for fifty years.

They’ve all seen the highlight reels of the San Francisco Sharks, of course. Matthew “Boom” Wilds, showing why he’s got that nickname, blasting through the court like a fucking bomb and coming victorious out of scrums with blood dripping down his chin. But the fact that he wants to laugh at Bubba’s decidedly unfunny jokes make the other guys on the team relax around him and try to include him in their already established camaraderie. During practice he high-fives Neil on a powerplay, and listens intently to Kevin whenever he raises his voice to captain the team. All in all, Matt seems to meld right into the team, like there was a Matthew-shaped hole in the team all along, ready for him to fill.

Towards the end of their third practice, Matt manages to score on Andrew, and Neil immediately turns to him to congratulate him with a clap to the back. Matt smiles back, and a whole entire row of shark teeth falls on the court, clattering to the floor like a broken string of beads.

The play is put on pause, and Bubba runs up to them and cuts a sharp glance at Neil.

“It’s not you,” Bubba says, nudging Matt, a sort of weak attempt at consolation. “It’s probably Nails here. He sucks all the magic in this place.”

Neil frowns, falling to his knees to help Matt pick up the teeth. “I really don’t think it’s me, though,” Neil says. “It’s the city. It’s always been weird about magic. It’s, it’s a whole thing. But I’m sorry, anyway.”

Matt smiles at him, and if Neil thought Matt to be attractive before, it’s nothing compared to how handsome he looks when he grins freely. Comforting. Warm. Human. “Don’t worry about it,” he says as a second row of teeth rattles to the floor. “Dan has never liked them and the teeth was kind of scaring the kid, anyway.”

 

* * *

  

Columbia is weird about magic. Well, for what counts as “weird” when it comes to magic, that is, as if magic isn’t inherently weird and strange for not abiding the laws of nature in the first place.

You see, becoming a star athlete changes you. That is not a metaphor. It’s an observable and deeply studied fact. It’s widely believed to have something to do with all that entails of becoming a star athlete in a major league; the heady combination of competitiveness, talent and being the object of worship of tens of thousands of fans that mix and results in physical changes in aforementioned athlete that ranges from the unremarkable to the, well, insane.

Some people just get a little stronger, a little faster than what the normal human body should be able to handle. Other people gets fangs. Shark teeth. Glowing eyes.

And then there’s the athletes that’s just two degrees from being called something holy. Something petrifying. The ones whose hairs are replaced by feathers and whose skins have turned to steel and who bleed other colors than red. The ones who barely resembles anything human anymore. Gods. Monsters. Pick your poison.

It’s not like Columbia doesn’t have the capability of making athletes like that. The city is practically crackling with magic, and Neil swears he can still feel it sizzling on his tongue like baking soda ten miles outside the city’s bounds, when the team goes on roadies.

And Neil can kinda see why Bubba would think that Neil could “suck up all the magic.” Because they exist. Athletes that work like black holes, who syphon all the magic on the court to make a beacon of pure light. Look at Baltimore, a city with its fair share of magic and look at the Ravens’ “King”, Riko Moriyama, with his eyes colored completely white and wings shimmering with the darkest shade of black Neil has ever seen. Look at New York. The Trojans’ Jeremy Knox, the golden boy who runs hotter than fire and looks increasingly like he’s been dipped in gold. Hell, look at what was the Las Vegas Tigers’ Dan Wilds, who used to bleed neon pink, and then didn’t bleed at all, but rather made others bleed with her body crystallized to diamond.

And for some time there, Neil was thought to be the next big star athlete. Lauded to be the one to save a sinking franchise, maybe. To resurrect a long dead team.

But Columbia doesn’t work like that. The Columbian Foxes don’t work like that. There’s no outer face other than the logo. Exy is a team effort and not a one-man show, and Columbia has certain traditions concerning magic. Mainly to be extremely conservative about it, and no one receives magic in Columbia.

Neil thinks the team could use being more monstrous, but the city seems to think otherwise.

Sometimes though, Neil thinks he can feel the surging power deep under the city hit against the ground in an attempt to break free and pour over and flood the entire population. The accumulation of hundred of thousands of wishes and dreams and pride, destroyed again and again for more than fifty years. The fanaticism in the beating heart of the city where Exy originated. Sometimes, Neil thinks he can hear its breathing right outside his bedroom door.

But Baltimore and New York and Las Vegas and literally every city other than Columbia is more liberal with their magic. And however much Neil has tried to reach the expectations of being the next big one, The Next One, that battle has to be left to people like Moriyama and Knox and Wilds and people who don’t have to wonder how it would feel to have anything other than red blood in them.

So yeah. Columbia is weird about magic.

 

* * *

  

In the locker rooms after the practice, Matt offers Neil a ride back home while drying his hair, but Neil declines, saying he’s already got one.

“Who?” Matt says, squinting down at Neil from under the towel, like he’s already asserted that Neil’s a compulsive liar. Andrew would get a kick out of that thought. Speaking of—

“Knives,” Nicky says, barging into the conversation as gracefully as a bull. “It’s one of their weird, allegedly rivalry _thing_. Knives drive Nails to and from the court and Nails makes sure that Knives gets fed. It’s really quite cute actually, if you see past the name calling and cajoling—”

“Nicky,” a voice interrupts. “Shut up.”

Nicky shuts his mouth with an audible click and they all turn towards the voice. And voila, Andrew J. Minyard, aka “Knives”, in all of his terrifyingly five feet glory, everybody.

Andrew slides his gaze from Nicky to Neil, and maybe it’s Neil imagining things, maybe it’s wishful thinking or maybe he’s literally hallucinating because of all the pre-season stress, but Neil swears Andrew’s features soften. He says, “You ready?”

Neil blinks away his delusions and nods, grabbing his bag and throwing a goodbye to Matt and Nicky over his shoulder before following Andrew out to the parking lot and to his shiny new Tesla. It’s tacky and gauche and obscene and all those fancy other words Neil had to learn to complete his GED, but it does the job of getting them from point A to point B, and seeing that Neil doesn’t have his driving license, he doesn’t have any place to complain.

Once inside the car, they just sit there in silence for a moment, staring straight ahead. It’s dark outside and the car is parked under the lamppost that’s flickering. It’s hypnotizing to follow, until it gives Neil a headache. Closing his eyes, Neil lies his head against the car door, feeling the engine hum under him as Andrew starts the car.

“You did good today,” Andrew says, and Neil’s eyes nearly pop out of their sockets with how hard he rolls his eyes. He hadn’t been able to score against Andrew even once today.

“Just drive,” Neil says, closing his eyes again. He falls asleep some time along the way.

 

* * *

 

See, before there was Nails, there was Knives. Before there was Neil Abram Josten, there was Andrew J. Minyard, who was supposed to be the one to bring the team back alive.

Being the first pick in the draft is admirable in and of itself, but being the first goalie to be picked first—well, that’s making history. Goalies are valuable, and good goalies are worth their weight in gold, but the tendency in this sport is to relay on a good offense. A good offense is the best defense and all that jazz.

And yet Andrew takes the Exy world by storm, a storm so big that it reaches across the country all the way to New York, where Neil was residing at the time, and Andrew does it all without breaking a sweat.

So when the Foxes gets first pick and catches Andrew in their hands, the headlines get a little bigger, the hopes a little higher. But it soon dwindles down to a whisper as the Foxes loses their championship spot, sports news bemoaning the lack of change observed in Andrew, and ultimately, nothing really changes for Columbia.

Neil gets picked first by the Foxes two years later, and when Neil finally gets to meet the elusive guy face to face, he can’t quite believe the claims that there’s not a single drop of magic in Andrew. Andrew stands his ground and holds his own up against teams full of monsters. Against the likes of Moriyama. Just glancing at the statistics would tell you that the team is faring thousands times better with just Andrew being there. A normal human with an absolutely inhuman set of skills.

This is what Neil finds when he gets to the team. A normal guy with the skills to go up against monsters. A guy who gets on the court with sharp eyes and even sharper smiles, toeing the line between elevated and manic and constantly being on the wrong side of it.

Neil meets Andrew face to face for the first time and holds his hand out for him to shake, and at the first touch, everything in Neil seizes up and _sings_.

Neil can’t believe Andrew is not even a little bit magic after that. Which is kind of terrifying, because the weight of the world is on Neil’s shoulders now and if Columbia deigns even a little bit of magic to just one of them, then Neil will do everything in his power to be the one and become Columbia’s favorite

So, maybe, it’s Neil who initially made up a rivalry between him and Andrew, but can you really call it a rivalry when the other guy doesn’t seem to think you’re worth it.

At this point, it’s just the competitive streak in Neil refusing to give the rivalry up. It’s an athlete thing and a competition thing. Also a pride thing. A guy thing. A beef thing.

It ends up being a sex thing too, but that’s another story.

 

* * *

  

It’s their ninth game in the season and the general atmosphere in the locker room is tense and restless. Not resigned, never that, because going onto the court with the expectation of losing is just the same as them ripping their contracts into shreds and signing the death warrants to their careers. But after more losses than wins, they need to kill this game to get back into the groove.

The thing is, and this is what’s really makes the disappointment burn, is that they’ve been really good. Great, fantastic even, with Matt onboard, and by all past accounts they should’ve gained more wins, but the other teams seems to have gotten better as well, and it’s just not enough. It’s never enough.

Neil is tired of not being enough.

But when they step out on the court, Neil feels a zing go through his body. They’re playing homefield and that always makes the team stronger, but this time, the air is downright electric. There’s a hum in Neil’s chest, something that trickles down his arms and makes the tips of his fingertips tingle in his gloves.

This time, when Neil puts on his helmet, he knows for certain that they’re going to kill it.

And they do. They pull off powerplay after powerplay and every pass seem to connect absolutely beautifully, like there’s a visible thread going between all of their racquets. And they score and score and continue to _score_ , and Neil’s running so much his muscles begin to scream at him in midplay, and this is what Neil lives for, why every cracked knuckle and bruised feet is worth it. He can’t believe he forgot how much he loves the feeling of adrenaline pumping through his body all the way to the edge of his _teeth_.

He’s so exhilarated, he doesn’t even really feel it when the edge of one of his opponent’s racquet collide with his face, just hears the whistle blow when his head is pushed back, hard enough to knock his helmet askew. He rolls with the hit and ends up on all four on the floor. It takes a moment to just get his breath back, feeling blood dripping down his lips and chin. He tries to take stock of the situation. Nothing hurts too badly so he probably hasn’t broken his nose or anything. Then again, it could be the adrenaline masking everything, but he takes his chances and pushes himself up.

But Nicky immediately shies away when Neil straightens up, his hands up as if he’s trying to placate him, or as if Neil is holding a gun to his face. Bubba and Kevin stare at him, slack jawed. Matt twitches, like he’s about to sneeze or heave, or maybe puke. Everyone is staring, frozen, the crowd turning abruptly silent. Even the ref is just staring wide-eyed at Neil, whistle still in his mouth.

“What?” Neil says, breathes a laugh through his nose. “It’s not that bad, guys, it probably looks worse than it is.”

He tugs off one of his gloves, sweaty and smelly and unhygienic, but he uses the free hand to wipe away the blood on his face, the metallic taste making him nauseous.

His hand comes away blue.

“Oh,” Neil says.

 

* * *

 

You need to understand, before there ever was Nails and Knives, or a Nails, or even a Knives, there was a Queen.

There was Kevin Day.

 

* * *

  

“I just don’t understand,” Kevin says, much later in the locker rooms. “Why _you_?”

It would’ve been better if Kevin had shouted it, or even acted angry. As it is, he’s sitting on one of the benches, his elbows resting over his knees and his head bowed.

“I don’t know,” Neil says, standing helplessly in front of the lockers with his hands hanging limply at his sides. He has washed his face, but the metallic taste still hasn’t left his tongue. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, great,” Kevin says, mock cheerful. “He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know anything, anything about handling this kind of magic, or how to handle the team with it or—”

“Kevin,” Andrew says, sitting on the bench beside Kevin and kicking Kevin’s legs. “Shut up. You’re panicking.”

That makes Kevin look him and finally, _finally,_ there’s the anger Neil was looking for written all over his face.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin says. “I’m panicking? I’m panicking? Is that so unreasonable? Maybe you should show some more concern. Nails is literally bleeding blue. There’s a need for a little panic.”

“Hey,” someone using Neil’s voice says, weirdly calm. “It’s okay.”

As if running on autopilot, Neil walks up to the bench and it feels so unreal, so surreal, like it’s the magic riding inside him that makes him reach out for Kevin and clasp a hand around his neck, grounding him. Kevin looks up at Neil, and it’s like the tension just bleeds out of him, his shoulders falling.

“It’ll be okay,” Neil says. “Because you’re all mine.” Here Neil looks over at Andrew. “And no one gets to hurt what’s mine.”

The words just kind of slips out. It’s true that no one gets to hurt the team, not when’s Neil is here, and just the thought of it happening, makes Neil feel a rush of blinding rage. Still. It should be odd to declare blatant ownership like that because people generally don’t like it that much when you call them _yours_ unprompted, but Kevin only nods in what looks like awe and fear in his eyes. Andrew doesn’t smile exactly, but he looks pleased.

Kevin and Andrew and Matt and Nicky and Bubba and Hammer and Rays and all the other guys. They’re Neil’s.

 

* * *

 

It’s all over the internet within minutes, of course, that moment where the camera operator had the defining moment of his career as he zooms right at Neil’s face, blue dripping all over his face.

There’s memes of it, which Nicky insists to send him, but after like, twenty minutes, Neil decides he has had enough and he deletes all of his social media apps. The PR management agrees enthusiastically to his decision, which is probably the first and only time Neil will get support from them on any of his decisions, so Neil soaks it up.

They tell him that the press has mostly been overwhelmingly positive, but that’s there’s still doubts of Neil’s ability to match up with any of the biggest monsters of the court. Which is what they want. Underestimation will be their last fault.

But Neil gets a phone call that same night. It’s an unknown phone number so Neil doesn’t know what possess him to answer it, but the voice that greets him is beseechingly hostile.

Hostile and familiar.

“Look,” Moriyama says. “There’s only one that can be the next one, and I’m not letting you get that title away from me. This isn’t a race everyone can win. Back off, or else.”

And then he just hangs up.

Moriyama wouldn’t be warning if he didn’t see Neil as a threat.

The thought makes Neil smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted 2018-11-04.  
> woke up at 2am and had a desperate need to write a spider-man au but im probably not finishing that in a long time, so here's a repost of another au with super powered beings 😝 comments and kudos are greatly appreciated‼️‼️‼️ thank you for reading 😳😣🤧


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